Place: Reviews & Ratings

Reviews by drinksandeats:

4.85/5 rDev +13.1%

Total Wine has a few locations in NoVa. The one in Fairfax is tucked behind a shopping center. If you take the wrong turn you end up descending a long flight of stairs to the front entrance, which gives you a sense of the size of the place.

As the name suggests, it is primarily a wine outlet, but they do have several aisles of beer. Cases are in a few rows by the far wall, with Genessee products going for about $11 for a 30-pack. The back refrigerator section has a nice selection of popular macros, but the highlight is the aisles of microbrews and foreign beers broken out by country of origin. This may be the widest aisle in the store, with featured beers stacked up by the case down the middle, six-packs to the left, 22s to the right. Besides carrying the bigger micro names, they have many hard-to-find local names as well.

The staff is very friendly, although they seem more geared towards wine than beer. The prices are just right given its NoVa location, and they have the best and biggest selection in the area. A+! (1,032 characters)

More User Reviews:

Last week I went to Total Wine in Alexandria, Va. This was my first time in a Total Wine and More. I was very surprised at the selection. The place was the size of a supermarket. The wine selection was overwhelming, but the Beer selection occupied three aisles. There was a small import section, but a really nice selection of domestic craft brews. I was able to pick up a few 750ml’s that I was unable to find in my neighborhood liquor stores in DC. Lastly, they seemed to have better prices on most beers; undercutting any competition by a dollar or so per six pack. If this place was not so far away from my home, I would become a regular customer. (653 characters)

It was about time I checked out this other venue for beer wants. I suspected it would be much like the other Total Wines in the region, and much of that is true.

It is a large warehouse like store, with an enormous selection. However, I have noticed that there weren't many large bombers here compared to other places I've been to in the DC area, and that also includes other total wine locations.

Quality is pretty standard, but you of course have to watch out for expired shelf items.

Service here is actually quite good, the staff looks good, is clean cut and takes pride in their apperance. The wine guy even helped me find something and got it from behind the doors which was great.

There is one thing though that I did notice which sets this place up very good compared to the other Total Wines in the DC area and that is pricing. Many of the singles here are often 1.49, which was nice. Even some of the few bombers were cheap going for 3.99 and one was even 1.99 (I thought for sure it was a mistake but nope!). Go find a bottle in DC of 22 oz for that low and get back to me (yeah you wont). Therefore I chalk this place up as inexpensive.

This is where I do 90% of my beer shopping by volume. They have the best prices in the area by far and despite not getting some of the rarest of the rare beers, one of the best selections around.

This is the Costco of beer/wine stores. It's a warehouse full of mostly wine but also have a huge wall of beer. Seriously I'm like a kid in a candy store at this place. My girlfriend literally has to drag me out every time we go. I've never gotten anything here that wasn't at the peak of freshness. I never talk to the staff so I don't have anything to say about them.

The kicker about this place is that they have this weird coupon in their mailer. I don't know what the deal with this is but it's not applied uniformly at all Total Wines. Almost all the time they run a $1 off every 6 pack and bomber over $5 coupon in the mailer. Most of the time they they will let you use it on things under $5. On the rare occasions there isn't a valid coupon available but often they apply the discount anyway, you just have to ask. Like 99% of the year, they have this coupon but it expires for a few days before the new one goes out. Doesn't make sense but I don't argue. Just check before you fill your cart so you know what you're getting into. they have the fliers right at the register so you don't need to get it before hand.

Then, like once a year they have $2 off everything. This is when I stock up big time. You can use it on up to 10 items so my gf and I go in there and clean house at least twice while they run the promotion. That way we have beer all summer for super cheap. It's awesome and it should be coming up soon. I'm getting excited just thinking about it.

This is the place to go. It can be a hike if you live in DC like I do but it's worth the gas to get out there. If you live in N VA and you don't go here, you are stupid. Stop being stupid and go here. (1,873 characters)

When I first walked into this place I thought I had died and went to heaven. While it is definitely a bigger wine than beer store, the selection of single bottles was phenomenal. They have a bunch of seasonals and limited releases lined up as soon as you walk in the door. Then they have a full aisle of single bottles of everything you can imagine. The bottles are placed by beer type, not brewer which, for a less seasoned drinker, helped me find some new favorites. They also have a large variety of 6 and 12 packs, with cases in the back. Great place to experiment, or find that import you've been craving. Because it is in the same plaza as Dogfish Head, they have a very nice selection of 6 packs and 750ml bottles. I can't wait to go back! (746 characters)

Last leg of my pitstops on the way back home. This store had one of the best 4/6pack selection I've encountered in a beer store. Almost 1 entire front to back aisle of packs @ great prices compared to NJ stores. Good VA local assortment and there single selection was quite tight as well. Bomber wise was ok, but the pack and single selection took over. Grabbed a case and a half of 6 and 4 packs to round out my trip. Good stop. Packs of BA brews, brews that people were trying to dog me in trades as "rarities" and lots of breweries not available to NJ. Service was non-existent but didn't ask for any help either. Great store (628 characters)

Tucked away around a back corner of the strip mall, this is a nice resource for wine-loving housewives and craft beer enthusiasts alike. Obviously very wine-centered, with only one aisle that is far from the entrance being dedicated to beer, and the staff being far more attentive to the wine shoppers than the beer crowd. Curiously, though, the most crowded aisle was the beer aisle, with a small crowd of people scanning the shelves of singles.

I was on a mission to find anything interesting that I couldn't obtain down in NC. Although I did find some gems, the shelves were somewhat picked over, and there was never an offer of help from the staff. I was also slowed in my search by the organizational scheme that had beers grouped by style instead of by brewery. This grouping certainly seems to make sense and is consistent with the wine organization in the store, but for some reason I tend to prefer seeing all of a brewer's selections next to each other. Overall, though, I was able to pull a number of bottles from the nice selection and will certainly come back to this location when I'm in the area. (1,112 characters)

This is an excellent wine store with a great, great beer selection. We went here twice while visiting my in-laws in Northern VA between Christmas & New Years.

Their beer selection is absolutely first rate. There is one long aisle of singles including bombers. Hundreds & hundreds of kinds of beers available in singles. There was also a doubly long aisle of 6 packs of craft beer. Everything here that I could want -- pretty much full catalogs from Victory, Bear Republic, Dogfish Head, Smuttynose, Troegs, Stone, Stoudts, etc. It certainly looks to me that every major craft brewer is fully represented here. Prices seemed very reasonable. I picked up 6 packs of HopDevil & Prima Pils for $7.49. I think the Red Rocket Ale 6 pack was $8.49. They were clearing out some of their Christmas beers & I got a Gouden Carolus Christmas ale & a Delirium Noel for $7.49 each for bombers.

I didn't really interact with anyone in the beer aisle, so I can't comment too much on the service, although they were good in their helping my wife in the wine section.

Great place. I'll be coming back every time I'm visiting the in-laws. (1,124 characters)

I was in VA to visit friends for an event in Reston. I looked at the barfly and picked out this place to drive through before heading back to PA.

I was impressed with their selection. I didn't talk to any sales people, so I just gave the service a 4. Their selection was large and included beers from all across the country, plus beers from belgium, UK, and Germany that were rather well known and distributed. They didn't have rare or crazy beers, however, and for that reason I wouldn't go out of my way again, although I am glad that I stopped. State Line Liquors, granted maybe and hour or two away from here, blows this Total Wine away. The only Lambics I saw here were Lindemanns, for example. Their selection of wide release beers from all over the US was quite impressive. I got a couple 6-packs, a case of Two Hearted, and many singles. Selection is huge, but includes a lot of "uninteresting" beers.

Prices were.. fine. Better than in PA for cases, and being able to buy a single bottle of anything is great for me.

Solid B+ place, but IMO A's are only for places worth a special trip, like State Line. (1,117 characters)

Pretty large selection of craft and import beers... probably the equivalent of three longish aisles. They stock most of the standards, and seemed to have an unusually large selection of unusual beers (by this I mean beers that you do not see too often, and when you do, it's not as part of such a large group) for example, Japanese beers, and beers from parts of Europe not normally celebrated for their brewing abilities. However, the craft brews easily outnumber the imports by about a about a 2:3 ratio. None of them are refrigerated, as far as I could see. This store has a much better selection than the Trader Joe's which is part of the same strip mall.

I didn't personally deal with any staff, but I did witness an incredibly patient employee attempt to help a very demanding old lady. He seemed to know his way around the beers. (838 characters)

Total Wine & More is a massive chain of wine/beer stores all over the east coast, expecially in Virginia. I went into the place expecting a mediocre selection of beer among mostly wine. However, I was surprised to find one of the best beer selections I have ever seen.

In the back, there is a row of coolers that holds mostly six packs. Along the back wall toward the right side of the store are cases. There is an aisle devoted to shelved six packs (non-refrigerated), and then the best part: an aisle full of singles. 12oz to 22oz to 750ml bottles. There is a huge selection of them, from around the world. The only downside is they are in the open air, without refrigeration.

I didn't get a chance to experience any service from anyone knowledgeable. I'm not sure if they have anybody there that helps with the beer. The checkout seemed to be okay though. The prices were fair, I didn't see anything outrageous. They have every single beer clearly labeled with a price.

I think this is one of the better beer selections in Northern Virginia. I haven't been to any others, so I don't know if they have the same amount of beer. (1,133 characters)